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When privatization isn’t “privatization”

The image below shows why Medicare and Social Security are the gold standard of privatization.

During Fiscal Year 2016 (1 Oct 2015 to 30 Sep 2016) the U.S. government expects to steal $1,111.9 trillion in FICA taxes. That money will, for all intents and purposes, be destroyed. (Money is not physical. It is created, destroyed, and moved by changing numbers on balance sheets.)

With privatization, however, that $1,111.9 trillion each year will flow straight to the thieves on Wall Street, who will use it to create the biggest speculative bubbles yet. After each new bubble reaches the bursting point, the big players (e.g. Goldman Sachs) will suddenly bet their money that the bubble will burst. Then they will deliberately burst the bubble, collect trillions in profits from their “short” bets, and tell Social Security beneficiaries, “Sorry, but the money’s all gone. God bless the free market.” (Which isn’t free since the money masters control it.)

Afterward, FICA tax revenue will continue to flow to the same thieves. And since none of the thieves will ever be convicted or prosecuted or even indicted, they will do it again and again. Bubble after bubble, causing an ever-widening Gap between the rich and the rest. Hence you can see why their greatest dream is to privatize Medicare and Social Security.

How will they get away with this crime? Simple. Since everyone insists that money is physical and limited (even though everyone knows that the U.S. government can create limitless money) everyone believes the lies when they are told that Medicare and Social Security are “insolvent.” Hence people will submit when the federal government starts cutting and cutting their benefits until the sheep start squealing for relief, even if it means privatization.

Of course it won’t be called “privatization.” Average Americans don’t want their Medicare or Social Security to be privatized. They just want the programs to be secured, even if it means giving the programs to Wall Street – i.e. privatizing them.

Full privatization will be called a “public-private partnership.”

Washington Post writer Glenn Kessler is paid to demand the privatization of Medicare and Social Security. He says that privatization isn’t actually privatization. Instead, it is “giving individuals more options to invest part of their benefits for higher returns.” In other words he appeals to people’s greed, selfishness, and stupidity. This trick never changes.

Only through privatization can we “protect and secure Social Security and Medicare for the future”

Only by letting Wall Street thieves steal everything from seniors can we “protect the promises we have made to seniors.”

The attack will not come all at once. It will come in stages. The first target will be Social Security disability benefits. You know…the money that keeps people alive when they are born with no arms or legs, or when they are paralyzed in an accident and confined to an iron lung for life. These people are dead weight. Get rid of them! They’re costing us MONEY!

Of course, the money to keep them alive is created by the U.S. government out of thin air. And that same money helps everyone, since it enters into the economy. But let’s not let facts get in the way of delicious selfishness.

So disability will be cut and cut. Disability is already said to be “bankrupt.” When it is privatized, everything will be sacrificed to monetary profit, which means endless increases in FICA taxes, plus endless cuts in services. God bless the free market!

And who will have caused this? The evil bankers and politicians? No. The cause will be the [profanity deleted by censors].

Oops. I shall rephrase. The cause will be every individual who sneers when you explain the facts about how money works. I refer to people who write smart-assed, self-righteous, stupid remarks in the reader comments sections of the main corporate media outlets. The ones who think they are brilliant, and that anyone who disagrees with them is a loser. (The Chunches are different. They simply have brain damage.)

“Privatization” is one of those pejorative political labels akin to the bogus claim that the Affordable Care Act is a “government takeover” of health care. Just as the health-care law preserves the private health-care system, private accounts in Social Security would have been established as part of the current system.

Social Security has two trust funds — one for retirement benefits and one for disability benefits — that are currently invested in Treasury securities, one of the safest investments possible. (Some argue that’s an accounting fiction, but that’s not right.)

It’s all an accounting fiction. That is, it’s just non-physical numbers on balance sheets.

In the late 1990s, as the federal government started running unexpected budget surpluses, Democrats and Republicans argued about what to do with the projected trillions of dollars in extra money. Republicans began pushing for a big tax cut, while then-President Bill Clinton countered with “Save Social Security First.”

Lies, lies, and more lies. The four disastrous years of the Clinton surplus were deliberate, not “unexpected.” During those four years the U.S. government did not have “extra money.” Rather, the economy had less money. Money is not physical. Moreover Social Security does not need to be “saved” in any financial sense (only in a political sense).

There’s a lot more garbage, but you’ve already heard it a thousand times. These bastards will never stop lying until the public stops wanting them to lie.

The main point is that for Glen Kessler, privatization does not really become “privatization” until it is total. I say that “public-private partnerships” are bullshit. I say that once the profit motive enters the scene in any way, in any degree, greed will quickly consume the entire system.

There’s an old saying. If you add a cup of water to a barrel of sewage, you get sewage. If you do the reverse, and you add a cup of sewage to a barrel of water, you again get sewage.

Privatization is the sewage. One drop will ruin the entire supply. For Glen Kessler, it’s not “privatization” until there is 100% total sewage.